Halacha
Resource
Type:
Peula
in:
English
Age:
10-17
Group Size:
10-55
Estimated Time:
45
minutes
Topic: This peulah deals with the
meeting of Halacha – received from Hashem thousands of years ago at Har Sinai –
with the ever-changing, always advancing technology of the soon to be 21st
century. Some people would like to say that Halacha is outdated, it doesn’t
apply anymore or holds us back from being part of modern society. We know
better. The rabbis of every generation have the ability to apply the principles
of Halacha to any possibility that you can imagine. Their amazing knowledge of
the Torah ensures that for every new product that technology can create, there
is a halacha to go with it, telling us how to use it.
Goal: To show that Halacha\Torah is not old and inapplicable but contains
information to cover all situations that futuristic technology can conceive.
This
peulah aims to instill in all of us a certain appreciation for the adaptability
of Halacha and how it can help to live our lives properly.
Peulah: Halacha and technology can be a difficult concept to grasp and has the potential
to be incredibly boring. To avoid that, this peulah moves to the extreme, using
wacky cases to prove the point.
It’s
not very active, but it should be fun and get the kids involved. The basic
format will be to present the chanichim\ot with a halachic problem, set in a
strange scenario. The weirdness of the case should help get them interested,
but to answer the question they’ll need to use some sort of Torah knowledge.
Let the kids try to answer the question and if they get stuck, give them some of
the information provided right after the question.
1A) You are travelling through
space to visit some distant relatives. On the way, you stop overnight at a
planet inhabited by Zyberkloids. As you finish Shacharit and are wrapping up
your tefillin, a curious Zyberkloid asks you what they are. When you tell him,
he becomes very interested and wants to put them on. As you look at the
Zyberkloid you realize that there might be a problem: It has 14 arms and 6
heads. How many pairs of tefillin does it need to wear?
Answering
this question is dependent on what is the nature of the obligation to wear
tefillin. If the obligation falls on each arm, the Zyberkloid might need 14
pairs. But if the obligation is on the person, he’d only need one pair. The
obligation is on the person, to remember that Hashem took us out of
1B) Which arm should the
tefillin go on?
Answering
this question should be easy. It is based on the same principle that tells us
to put it on our weak arm, generally being the left. We learn this from the
spelling of the word “Yadcha – your hand” in the Torah, which has an extra
“Hey” at the end. (We explain the word
to be “Yad Keha – your weak hand”.) So the Zyberkloid should put the tefillin
on its weakest arm, or one of its weakest if some of them are equal.
2) You’re vacationing on a
strange planet known for its beautiful night skies, lit up with exciting colors
and star formations that you never see from earth. One Motzei Shabbat, you go
outside to say Kiddush Levana and discover a drawback to such a peculiar sky.
One of the nice things about it was that it had four moons. Do you have to say
Kiddush Levana* for each moon?
Your
initial response might be that you have to say Kiddush Levana over each moon as
it begins its new cycle, even if that means having to do it four times a month.
However, is the Mitzva to bless any new moon or just the one that the calendar
is based on? This would mean that you would only say Kiddush Levana over one
moon. These are some of the principles which would have to be used to answer
this question. Something to think about: If none of the moons there followed
the cycle of the one that we use to set up our calendar, would say Kiddush
Levana at all?
3) You are travelling from one
galaxy to another. It’s a long distance but your spaceship is equipped with
warp speed. Using it allows you to arrive at your destination in several
minutes. Should you say Tefillat Haderech?
There
are different opinions regarding the saying of Tefillat Haderech. One opinion
is that it is dependant on a minimum distance that you travel, the other
opinion says that it is based on a minimum time spent travelling. According to
the first opinion, you’d still have to say Tefillat Haderech but not according
to the second one.
4) You are being transported
from a spaceship to a planet. Baruch Hashem, you arrive safely. The next day is
a Monday. Do say a Birchat HaGomel at Shacharit when they lein from the Torah?
Birkat
Hagomel is dependent on whether or not your trip was dangerous. For example,
while most of us say a Birkat HaGomel after flying over an ocean, some people
say that flying is so statistically safe that it does not merit a Bracha. The
same would be true for transporting. While being broken down into atoms, sent
across space and reassemble later sounds dangerous to us, it may be a foolproof
technique at some point. (Hurray for all you Trekkies). Saying Birkat Hagomel
will probably be dependent on whether or not transporting is considered safe.
5)
After transporting, do you say Modeh Ani?
We
say Modeh Ani in the morning to thank Hashem for returning our Neshama to our
bodies. The question is, when your body gets split up into individual atoms and
then put back together, does your Neshama leave your body or not?
6) There is a woman married to
a man…and then he gets cloned. Is the woman now married to both of them? Can
she be?
As
scientists start talking seriously about cloning people, this question becomes
more interesting. Basically, the halacha is that no person can have more than
one spouse. It used to be that a man could have more than one wife but a few
centuries ago, Rabbeinu Gershom made a Takana that they couldn’t do that
anymore. So it doesn’t matter if it is the woman or man being cloned, nobody
can be married to two people. You can only be married to someone if you do a
certain process called Eirusin and then Kiddushin. So the woman would not be
married to the clone…unless the clone is considered to be halachically the same
person as the original. Then it would get interesting.
Important:
The purpose of this sicha is to show that halachic principle that we use
nowadays can be applied to any situation. The examples used are not supposed to
be real halachot. Psak Halacha for a new situation can only be decided by a Rabbi
who knows all the relevant material. Don’t confuse this sicha with reality.
The
idea is the important part. Halacha is applicable to all situations and should
always be looked at in order so that we know what to do. A lot of times,
halacha combines with technology to provide us with benefits. For example,
years ago, people would have no light on Shabbat. Now, with Shabbat
clocks\timers, we wouldn’t think about spending Shabbat in the dark.
Other…
Alternative
suggestions for this peulah can include having the chanichim act out the
situations…
Or, you
can just embellish the stories and tell them as an interactive, interesting
long story of you last trip to outer space…
AMAZING
CONTEST!!!! PRIZES FOR ANSWERS!!!
Send your most creative answers to the
above questions to:
Barry Kislowicz
Bnei Akiva-National Lishka
* Kiddush Levana is a special blessing and prayer said one night (usually motzie Shabbat) between the new moon (Earliest time is either the third or seventh day of the month) and the full moon (15th of the month).
» Alles > Torah > Halacha
» Alles > Jodendom > Het houden van de Mitsvot
Stats:
Viewed: 9258
Downloaded: 2235
Hai scaricato questo file e hai qualcosa da condividere?
Questo è il posto!